"Woman's Sphere" in the Rise of American Capitalism

Book Review

March is Women’s History Month

The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman’s Sphere” in New England, 1780-1835, Nancy F. Cott, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1977

As I noted previously in a review of Paul E. Johnson’s A Shopkeeper’s Millennium, an account of the rise of the industrial capitalists of Rochester, New York in the 1830's, in any truly socialist understanding of history the role of the class struggle plays a central role. However, the uneven development of society throughout history has created other forms of oppression that need to be address. In America the question of the special oppression of blacks as a race clearly fits that demand. And everywhere the woman question cries out for solution.

Any thoughtful socialist wants to, in fact needs to, know how the various classes in society were formed, and transformed, over time. I have mentioned previously that a lot of useful work in this area has been done by socialist scholars. One thinks of E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class, for example. One needs to have a sense about the evolution of the forms of woman’s oppression, as well. One does not, however, need to be a socialist to do such research in order to provide us with plenty of ammunition in our fight for a better world. One of the great developments of the past thirty or forty years is the dramatic increase in research, led by the feminist resurgence, on woman’s history. The book under review here Nancy Cott’s study of the role of women in early capitalist America, The Bonds of Womanhood, is an early such addition.

I have mentioned in other reviews of this period in American history that the changes from an agrarian/mercantile society as found at the time of the American Revolution to the contours of an industrial society in the Age of Jackson were dramatic and longstanding. This was also the case with the role of women. Women, due to their biological function, have always been central to the cohesion of the family throughout class history. The form that has taken however has varied with changes in the economic superstructure. Thus such occurrences, due to the nature of industrial development, as the decrease in extended families, the dividing of work from the home, the putting out system, the dominance of the male as ‘breadwinner’ and the domestication of women as center of family life had profound changes in the way the family related to the world, the way children were socialized and the way woman subordinated their desires and creativity to the tasks at hand. Sound familiar?

Professor Cott makes her case for this observable change by looking at changes of various types of New England families from self-sufficient farmers to producers for the market, etc. She also relies heavily, as all historians of necessity must, on the record left behind by women mainly through their diaries. There are certain methodological problems inherent in that approach and a tendency to generalize off of the relatively small numbers for whom a record survives but nevertheless her early work is the starting place for a better understanding of the crisis in the family that occurred with the rise of capitalism in America.

I would note as a sidelight that her digging up various self-help manuals of the time for child-rearing and other domestic responsibilities was quite interesting. Dr. Spock, in the last generation, and today Oprah and Doctor Phil and their ilk thus come from a long pedigree of those who had something to say about the correct raising of YOUR children. Read on.

HONOR THE ANTI-FASCIST WOMEN OF THE SPANISH REVOLUTION

BOOK REVIEW

IN THE YEAR OF THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BARCELONA UPRISING HONOR THE ANTI-FASCIST WOMEN FIGHTERS

MEMORIES OF RESISTANCE: WOMEN’S VOICES FROM THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR, SHIRLEY MANGINI, YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, NEW HAVEN, 1995

One of the great achievements of the last thirty plus years in the women’s liberation movement has been the dramatic increase in the amount of scholarship on the role of women in history. That is to the good. Even better when the research concerns the role of women in a subject that is one near to my heart-the anti-fascist struggle in the Spanish Civil War. One can argue with the feminist politics that drives Ms. Mangini’s work. One can argue about the somewhat arcane literary/sociological academic methodology that she uses to motivate her study. What cannot be argued is that she has made an important contribution in giving voice to the women of that struggle that has been muted for a long time. While it is true that history is made by the victors, or at least the flow of propaganda is controlled by them, the stories that she has to tell about those women who served, were imprisoned, executed by Franco or forced into external and internal exile makes for compelling reading.

If one knows anything about the role of women in the Spanish Civil War it usually revolves around the personality of the famous Stalinist Dolores Ibarruri-'La Pasionaria'- well known for her slogan-They Shall Not Pass during the siege of Madrid. For those a little more knowledgeable the name of the Anarchist governmental minister Frederica Montseny may come to mind. Beyond that there is generally a blank. Ms. Mangini has filled in those blanks with the stories of lesser known women leaders, militia women, rank and file politicos and those who helped the cause in a myriad of other ways. She vividly describes their roles behind the lines, on the front, in the political organizations, in prison awaiting long sentences or execution, and in exile. Ms. Magnini also describes something that I have found to be generally true of those who fought on the Republican side-male or female-the extreme difficulty in articulating what they did and what happened to them during the Civil War even after the end of the Franco regime in 1975. Obviously, in some cases, those stories will never be told or told in a muted manner. One thing is sure for those of us who cherish the memory of the anti-fascist fight in Spain. General Franco should have never been able to die in his bed.